csua.org/u/bnk -> onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/120604Madsen/120604madsen.html
December 6, 2004The manipulation of computer voting machines in the recen t presidential election and the funding of programmers who were involved in the operation are tied to an intricate web of shady off-shore financ ial trusts and companies, shady espionage operatives, Republican Party p oliticians close to the Bush family, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) contract vehicles. An exhaustive investigation has turned up a link between current Florida Republican Representative Tom Feeney, a customized Windows-based program to suppress Democratic votes on touch screen voting machines, a Florida computer services company with whom Feeney worked as a general counsel and registered lobbyist while he was Speaker of the Florida House of Rep resentatives, and top level officials of the Bush administration. At the time, Curtis was of the opinion that the program was to be used for preventing fraud in the in the 2002 election in Palm Beach C ounty, Florida. Yang, an engineering and computer services company subcontracted to NASA prime contractors like Lockheed Martin, was founded in 1986 by Dr. Granted minority-owned "Section 8A" and woman-owned pref erential status by the US government, Yang's clients also include the Florida Department of Transportation (DOT). Yang's President, Li-Woan (L ee) Yang, is Tim Yang's wife. The Yangs als o serve as co-trustees for an entity called Yang of Merritt Island, Ltd. In the autumn of 1999, Curtis, who served as a sort of technology adviser for Yang, first became aware of Feeney's interest in election rigging. Feeney's desire to manipulate the vote would be manifested in his home ba se of Volusia County in the 2000 presidential election. According to The Washington Post, at 10 pm on election night, Al Gore was leading Bush in Volusia County by 83,000 to 62,000 votes. One-half hour later, Gore' s vote total had been reduced by 16,000 to 67,000 and an obscure Sociali st candidate saw a sudden surge to 10,000 votes in a precinct with only 600 voters. The information on the Volusia optical scanner voting anomal ies came from a leaked internal Diebold memorandum. In the end, Bush won Florida and the White House by a mere 537 votes in the most controversi al US presidential election in history. He was gubernatoria l candidate Jeb Bush's running mate in 1994, a race in which Democratic incumbent Lawton Chiles defeated Bush. Chiles once referred to Feeney as "the David Duke of Florida politics." In 2002, Feeney asked Curtis if he could develop a touch screen voting ma chine "flip flop" program. According to Curtis, Feeney asked him, "Can y ou write a program to flip votes around on touch screen machines?" Curti s said Feeney wanted the program to merely reduce votes in heavily Democ ratic areas and flip Republican votes to 51 percent and keep Democrat vo tes to 49 percent. Curtis added that Feeney "did not want to win by a lo t" In return, Curtis said Feeney offered him "big jobs." Curtis's main tasks at Yang were to develop the Florida DOT's Electronic Document Mana gement System. He also worked on the Project Pipeline Information System at another one of Yang's major clients, Exxon Mobil's Coral Gables faci lity. Curtis said he developed the voting program and eventually handed off his prototype to Feeney. The program was also reviewed by Curtis's senior c oder, Hai Lin (Henry) Nee, who according to Florida Department of Transp ortation sources, was an illegal alien working in the United States. Acc ording Curtis, not only did Nee review the vote switching program code b ut he constantly downloaded sensitive data to his computer from NASA's c omputers. Nee, according to Curtis, moonlighted at an Orlando company ca lled Azure Systems, described by The Orlando Sentinel as a "three person engineering firm" and one of a number of companies linked to Ting Ih-Hs u, a former Lockheed Martin employee. At the same time Nee was reviewing Yang's vote switching program, he was also being investigated by US f ederal investigators for illegally shipping Hellfire missile parts to Ch ina. Oddly, although US law enforcement agents had put Nee and his ass ociates under surveillance for illegal exports of technology to China in 1999, he and his colleagues were not arrested until March of this year. Curtis claimed that Yang's corporate bosses stressed that the company had "unlimited" sources of money that came "mostly" from China. According t o Florida DOT employees, House Speaker Feeney pressured their agency to give money to Yang for nonexistent software. The sources also revealed t hat Feeney was aware that Yang was employing a number of illegal aliens on State of Florida and federal contracts. Feeney's ties to Yang paralleled similar close ties to NASA. Feeney's wif e Ellen has worked as an engineer for NASA's Kennedy Space Center since 1985. Jeb Bush ensured that Florida's 24th Congressional District was re drawn so that Feeney would have an easy time in his 2002 race against De mocratic opponent Harry Jacobs. According to Florida state officials, wh o spoke on the condition anonymity, 500 Yang employees at the Kennedy Sp ace Center were paid for their time when they agreed to picket against J acobs. In addition, NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe, according to the sa me sources, lobbied extensively for Feeney within NASA. In addition, O'K eefe and his close friend and former Pentagon boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, made campaign appearances for Feeney at the Kennedy Space Center . In 2002, he was elec ted to the US House of Representatives in a race that also saw the re- election of Jeb Bush. Early in "vote switch's" development stages, Feene y had told Curtis that he wanted the program "made to control Palm Beach " in 2002. Palm Beach County's Election Supervisor was still the controv ersial Theresa LePore, nicknamed "Madam Butterfly," who designed the inf amous "butterfly ballots" in the 2000 election. LePore had once been an employee of Saudi multi-billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi link that i s tied to a huge multi-billion tranche of money distributed throughout o ff-shore trusts, accounts, and corporations with interlocking directorsh ips that are controlled by Bush interests in Houston. It was this Bush-c ontrolled money cache, originating in the East, and known in Houston by the name "Five Star" and other cryptonyms that was, according to US in telligence insiders, used to fund the rigging of the 2004 election. When he arrived in Congress, Feeney was given a seat on the House Science and Technology Committee, which oversees NASA's operations. Feeney was also appointed to the important House Finance and Judiciary Committees. He was also given a clean bill of ethical health by Florida's Ethics Com mission, a panel that has a Republican majority. After Feeney's ascension to Congress, Yang's questionable billing activit ies with its Florida DOT contract came to the attention of Ray C Lemme, a seasoned senior investigator with the Florida DOT Inspector General's Office and a combat veteran of the Vietnam War. Lemme had a lot of evid ence to suspect that Yang was overbilling the DOT for "millions." After discovering Yang's dirty laundry, Curtis went to work for the DOT. Mavis Georgalis, the DOT's contracting officer for the Yang contract, was als o aware of improprieties with the contract. As a result of pressure from the Florida State House, both Curtis and Georgalis were eventually fire d by the DOT because of their complaints about the Yang contract. Someon e was obviously trying to send Curtis a message when, on August 14, 2002 , he discovered that someone poisoned his pet Pomeranian dog, Emily. Lem me was forced to stop his official investigation of Yang for similar rea sons. However, he decided to continue an "unofficial" investigation of Y ang and its practices on the side. According to DOT employees familiar with the Yang case, Lemme was aware t hat it was Jeb Bush who personally shut down his investigation of Yang. Lemme also leaked details concerning his investigation to the Daytona Be ach News Journal. The investigator had previously requested a full audit of the Yang contract with the DOT...
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